In the movie 30 Days of Night a group of vampires take over a town in Alaska. At first it seems like a good idea because you know, what would a vampire like more than a captive population in a place of perpetual night for a long time with long nights following it. But just in case any vampires are reading this, Finland wouldn’t be a very good place to colonize. Allow me to explain.

5. It’s very, very cold

This might not seem like a very deterring thing for a vampire who’s cold to begin with but the problem comes the moment the vampire needs to eat. See humans are not cold to begin with. And up at the latitudes where actual night falls for days and days the people don’t dress in cute parkas that frame their face just right and jeans. They dress in layers. Lots and lots of layers that would likely stop an errant bullet. The amount of layers people in truly cold climes wear would at least slow down a vampire enough for the next reason to become a problem.

4. We’re generally pretty well armed

Finns own roughly 32 guns per 100 citizens (8th most in the world) but that’s not actually my point. In Finland you’re never very far away from a tree. Even a shopping center near me has trees growing inside it. With woods and gardens come tools and supports. A lot of Finns also generally like to work with their hands and this ranges from knitting (note the short and long wooden and non needles) to woodworking with all their assorted tools that go with it. Most house owners also have at least a small chainsaw which should come handy incase a vampire needs beheading.

3. We have a reputation for a reason

I love Finland and the Finns in it but we have a reputation for being standoffish which is richly deserved. When we have a connection with someone (like someone we know knows them) we may or may not become talkative but generally Finns are just a very quiet sort of people with more than a touch of xenophobia thrown in. This will seriously impair a vampire’s possible victim-pool. And the ones who are more trusting are drunk to the gills and thus likely taste very bad.

2. Miles and miles of lonely woods

We are a nation of small towns spread apart by miles and miles of lonely woods. Sure you can wipe out a small farming community this month but what happens next month? Not to mention that the farming communities are especially insular. Traditionally vampires aren’t fans of running water too and there’s plenty of that in the land of 100 000 lakes. Meaning that if a vampire wants to commute to the next farming community, they’ll be hard-put to find a route there that doesn’t go over running water.

1. The other side of the coin

Winter is a hard time in Finland because it’s dark, very dark and humans haven’t really evolved to handle that particularly well. We get depressed and tired. But the good news about darkness is that it doesn’t last forever. Well, to humans at least. In the areas with 30 days of night there also comes a summer with 30 nights of day. And surrounding that perpetual day are months and months where the sun doesn’t truly set. Sure outside of that 30 it goes under the horizon. Barely. If I remember correctly, every summer there are four continual months when the sun is at least a whisper on the sky. The lore holds that even that whisper should be too much for a vampire. So that would be 30 days of prospective gluttony among well-armed people dressed in the woolen equivalent of a bullet-proof vests against 4 months of utter hunger. If I were a vampire I’d go find easier climates.

This article was written by Nina Niskanen and first published at http://ninaniskanen.com